Here is a translation of some of an article in Le Monde. [Click here]

China's savings finance consumer debt and the deficits of the the United States

Have poor countries become the new bankers to the rich nations? The spectacular growth of the reserves in Asian nations (1,400 million dollars from China alone at the end of the year 2007 ...), the accumulation of petro-dollars in the Persian Gulf nations and in Russia, the anticipated re-issuances of the debts of Argentina or Brazil [translator's note: which have traditionally been made by American banks] makes one think that developing nations will henceforth finance industrial nations.

"On the morality of the plan, this situation is rather shocking," judges Dominique Plihon, economics professor at Paris XIII and the president of the Scientific Council of Attac. The flight of capital towards the Northern countries in effect hitches the development of emerging economies who are far from being able finance their own needs to ameliorate their infrastructures.

This paradox is only partially true. The receipts of direct foreign investments published by the Conference of Nations United on Commerce and Development(CNUCED) attests to it: industrial nations received 857 millions of dollars of captial in 2006, but they also exported even more (1,022 millions). For developping nations, the situation is reversed: they have received more (379 millions) than they have exported (174 millions).

"In fact," Boris Cournede surmises (economist in the Political economy and money division of the Organization of Cooperation and Developing economies (OCDE), "The deficit with a running balance is an especially American Phenomenom. IN the United States, the deficiat will attain 842 millions of dollars this year. The interesting thing is that it is financed by China's commercial surplus and by oil-rich nations, when in other times, these dis- equilibriums would exist between developing countries.

This is confirmed by Patrick Artus, chief economist at Natixis ... "Latin America and the European Union are in a general equilibrium. The first ran deficits to finance their development, but the traumatism of the debt crisis was so hard that Latin American countries prefer no longer to have debts -- at the risk of slowing down their growth -- rather than revive the strict budgets and unemployment which result."

...

"WE have arrived at an astonishing situation" which has been going on for many years, commented Xavier Musca, a treasury director. Certain emerging countries, with China at the head, have invested massively in American Treasuries. China has financed a very large part of the colossal deficit of the [United States].

Economists call this a "credit crunch" but all that really means is that cash reserves are being drawn down in order to pay for goods and bills that are now more expensive because the value of dollars has depreciated. Businesses with assets in the millions and having to service debts are having increased expenses, and thus bank reserves are being drawn down, which makes less available for banks to extend credit. But banks get the double-whammy, because when the foreign exchange rates plummet,large businesses or persons with international portfolios suffer a percentage loss from assets that are valued in dollars.

I think we're in trouble. The markets have been wobbly all year, and with the oil prices spiking damn near $100, the costs of everything are going to accelerate, and this can't help the already bad economic situation.

Hold on to your ass, the real shit is coming.

Right now the French are damn near in revolt. Of course you probably don't know that because the American press is obsessed with stupidity like hormones sold to Baseball players in 2003 that was not illegal or against baseball rules at the time.

The train drivers just came off strike. The Fisherman are pissed because the price of gas is driving them out of business. And the students in 8 universities (and some faculty) are striking because a new law is allowing private funds to fund the schools.

When our government leaders pass bad laws (the bankruptcy bill, the medicare destruction bill, et cetera) we Americans passively get pissed, if we even know what's going on at all. We don't have a heritage of community and labor organizations like the French. We are organized by the Television.

Think about it. You know it's true.

Anyway, you gotta love the French because they don't just protest, they give the reasoning behind why they protest. Here's the reason why the French are protesting the Education privatization bill : (you'll have to trust my French translation) [from Le Monde]

"If one includes the main budget – which isn't supplemented –, the late payments to the teacher, researchers, and the other contracts, not much remains", detailed Bruno Julliard. "Especially for the student groups, the increased budget don't apply to things that specifically concern the students : cash, housing aide, and staff recruitment....

Furthermore the law implies that school will have to gain new functions for which the schools will have to recruit qualified personnel. The 2008 budget however includes nothing for these needs....

In his latest article, David Kay Johnson reports that 2 separate studies showed that "Retail electricity prices have risen much more in states that adopted competitive pricing than in those that have retained traditional rates set by the government."

The price spread grew from 1.09 cents per kilowatt-hour to 3.09 cents, her analysis showed. It also showed that in 2006 alone industrial customers paid $7.2 billion more for electricity in market states than if they had paid the average prices in regulated states.

This is the problem with ultra-market ideologues. They misunderstand the inherent power-relationships in society. Competition might make a better product, but it does not solve or even understand social stresses and situations at all. In fact, as the studies prove over a period of 16 years, competition can exascerbate social relations and make system integration and investment difficult because the priorities of profits and portfolios will overrule the long-term goals of society.

The neigh-sayers and true-believers will talk about gradual improvements or try to tie the higher prices to the overall energy situation, but again they miss the point. Energy is such an important commodity, that we shouldn't outsource energy production and distribution to private for-profit entities whose goals are to make money and accumulate customers. The funds are funnelled out of the communities who rely on them for their electricity, and thus don't get re- invested in the community. The capital-intensive nature of the energy business makes it a natural monopoly. There is no real competition possible because there will always be a small number of very large firms who have to collude or coordinate to avoid ruinous price wars.

The mantra of de-regulation was really just another way to allow other large corporations to get a piece of the action, and that's why the prices in deregulated states are 37% more than in the regulated states.

Gerald Ford in his recent book.

[REAGAN was] a superficial, disengaged, intellectually lazy showman who didn't do his homework and clung to a naive, unrealistic and essentially dangerous world view."

[Reagan was] "probably the least well-informed on the details of running the government of any president I knew."

Reagan allowed appointments up and down the federal bureaucracy who were incompetant, inferior, and corrupt. Fortunately there were occasional exceptions, but that was due to George Schultz and Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush. Reagan read speeches and had no idea what was going on in his administration. That's why Iran Contra happened.

From the ABC News Washington Post poll since 1980.

Percentage of Americans who Prefer a New Direction

• After Bush 75%
• After Reagan 55%
• After Clinton 47%

But they still drag him out like a funky, rotten old teddy bear they've had since they were 3 years old. Cause they are still 3 years old.

From Floyd Norris at the New York Times.

Over the last 12 months, the government’s current numbers indicate that the private sector added an average of 115,000 jobs a month. But 80 percent of those jobs came from the statistical adjustments....

Most of those jobs — 103,000 of them, before seasonal adjustment — were added by the statisticians, not reported by employers. (It should be noted that, before seasonal adjustment, there were 201,000 jobs added, so this is just more than half.)

Why add jobs? It is an effort to include jobs created by new companies not surveyed, less an estimate for jobs lost at companies that went out of business and therefore did not respond to the survey.

It is also worth noting that the govertment’s other survey, of households, has not found those jobs. Over the last 12 months, it has found about 50,000 new jobs a month. In October, it found employment declined by 250,000 jobs.

What statisticians do is assume the ratio of employees to employees added are the same, with perhaps some economic sector adjustments. It's a messy estimate, given that the original data is flawed, but in times of normal economic activity, a 5% margin of error is possible. When economic conditions change or when the economy is in transition, the ratios are impossible to ascertain with certainty.

When Bush says the Congress is wasting their time and talks about the dangers of Hitler, he should know. His family made their millions funding the rise of Hitler. They loved Fascism and military dictatorship, and kept up their business relations into World War Two until in 1943 Prescott Bush got busted under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Roosevelt made a deal however, and got Bush to use his contacts to infiltrate spies and obtain information.

These people understand Hitler very well, they created him.

But in truth, anything on Fox news is contrived.

From Today's New York Times [ SOURCE]

The authorities in Southern California believe they have gotten to the bottom of one of several arson investigations stemming from last week’s wildfires. A boy who was interviewed about the Buckweed fire, which burned nearly 60 square miles and destroyed 21 homes in Los Angeles County, “admitted to playing with matches and accidentally starting the fire,” the county sheriff said in a statement.

Now wildfires don't have to be started by anyone. They occur naturally when the humidity in the air goes below a certain threshold. California has had many, many incendiary fire disasters in the last 50 years. They occur in regular intervals because of the dry, arid climate.

So let's get this straight, A boy "admits to playing with matches" and then gets sent home. Then later on, the article quotes "The Voice of San Diego" :

Though they work on assumption that there is a non-criminal cause to the fire, sometimes investigators can’t find any probable cause for a wildfire. That’s where arson comes in. If an investigator reaches a conclusion of “negative corpus,” meaning they have eliminated all other possibilities, they will initiate a criminal investigation for arson.

So they interviewed a boy who says he played with matches, and that's all the proof sufficient to publish a news story. According to the crack reporting job, "it was not clear" that he would face charges.

Remember when Fox News anchors (I think Neil Cavuto) stated equivocally that Al- Quaeda set the California fires.

In most businesses, you get fired for violating the public trust and for purposely spreading rumors and false information.

Holy shit. Do you realize that the Russians have been negotiating deals with Iran, the Caspian Sea nations, and China over the various natural gas and oil deposits all over the region? The entire middle east and world politics have re-aligned thanks to the despots in the White House. Europe is gradually pulling away from us. Mexico and Canada are very weary, and starting to assert their independence quite frequently.

The government has been taken over by brigandeers backed by billionaires, and these people are crazy. They appoint people in the State Department, the Justice Department, and the Defense Department who believe the Republic can only be saved by creating an emperor and a new American Empire. Look up "PNAC" on google.

Russia has a deal with Iran to develop Nuclear Reactors for Energy but they are afraid to deliver the rods of nuclear fuel pellets because they are afraid the US will bomb it and release all of that nuclear radiation into the atmosphere. The cover story in the newspapers is about financial arrangements, but that's not the real reason. [ SOURCE:I heard this from cynk Ueger on the Young Turks Tuesday, 30 October 2007 -- who has contact with Turkish and Russian natives and also various US military professionals.]

Depleted Uranium (abbreviated as DU) is radioactive. The "Depleted" does not mean the radiation has been removed. The "Depleted" just means that one of the isotopes of Uranium has been removed. What's left is still radioactive. "DU" is used to harded the head of bombs to give them extra-penetration. Millions and millions of grains of dust is created from each shell (Avogadro's number = 6.02 times 10 to the 23 power is greater than a billion by the way.) The dust gets blown for miles and miles around. Plus, because it's radiation, you only need to ingest about 100 grains to get radiation sickness. YOu know what Gulf- War syndrome is. YOu know why the numbers of birth defects in Iraq began to appear after the first Gulf War. A lot of pretentious propagandistas have been allowed to publish otherwise, but let's get real. It makes me sick to hear the apologist deniers attempt to exculpate themselves from complicity in the radioactive toxification of the entire region.

Don't believe me. Consult the World Health Organization on Depleted Uranium.

God damn most Americans are so ignorant of what our corrupt government has become, especially the rabid blind red meat eaters; but really the Television dumbs everything down into over-simplication and nonsense. Not everyone gets a good history teacher either.